I have been following the Voices letters for the past couple of weeks, and reading through many of them is more painful than falling headfirst down a flight of stairs. Or so I imagine.

Case in point: a letter titled “This Will Be America” (Globe, Nov. 14) showed how many run with whatever destructive rhetoric they hear. The writer stated as fact that “marriage will legally be open to man to man, woman to woman, and any other mismatch humankind chooses to dream up.”

If this reader would have done some fact-checking, he or she would have found that regardless of his personal feelings, President-elect Obama has stated that he believes the issue of marriage should be left to the states.

I am a young conservative and am just as concerned about these issues of morality; however, these matters belong to state-level elections and deliberations. Our national leaders — and ours, for that matter — should now be focused on what is being proposed for our economy.

Our Congress is deliberating an additional $25 billion to the auto industry, on top of the $25 billion the industry already received to retool factories. This new bailout isn’t going toward reducing the prices of cars or helping the industry change its practices but toward current bills and retirement/health-care costs. How is this going to help the industry and the American consumer? Will the proposed measures be a long-term solution for the industry? How is the UAW contributing to the industry’s demise?

As an under-30 voter, I am begging the readership to focus on the current issues that really affect the American political body, such as the economy, and not the polarizing rhetoric of the individual parties.

Matt McCleary

Carterville